What is the relationship between social media and the impact on B2B marketing? Unquestionably, a digital world involving social media is the future of B2B’s. In fact, social media has already propelled B2B businesses beyond anything they could have hoped for without the benefit of social media.
If any business is doubtful as to whether or not they can succeed on social media, they just have to look at the wildly successful campaigns and results involving B2B marketing and social media. Case in point, large B2B companies such as HubSpot, Google, and IBM now serve both businesses and customers. An amazing job of content sharing is being done by these companies. The content they post builds their audience and is of interest to them. These companies no longer need to constantly broadcast their services and products in fact, because they have been so successful in social media.
What Does It Take?
For a B2B business to be a social media success, what does it take? Answer: A middle ground needs to be found and established for their content. On the platform, it must not disrupt the experience of their audience, yet it must be decidedly engaging. Most importantly, companies who want to be successful on social media must understand what it truly is their audience wants, in order to enjoy social media’s benefits.
The entire concept of social media brands and its landscape have been transformed by B2B companies. To attract and engage your audience, test out some of these proven successful B2B marketing strategies on social media.
Set Up Intelligent Goals
To be successful, you’ll need to set up a social media strategy. Define measurable, specific KPIs (key performance indicators) for your social media. They may be based on acquisition or brand awareness, but, down the line, they will be instrumental in measuring success.
Watch Your Competitors
In business, it’s always a good idea to keep a close eye on the competition. Remember that your competitors’ marketing strategy can walk through the same doors that were opened to you by social media.
Check to see whether or not they were successful running their last campaign. Be inspired by that campaign, provided it was successful, if your audiences are similar. This is not to say you should take all their strategies and copy them, however. To differentiate yourself from your competition, look for the right opportunities.
Share Content That’s Original
Rather than curating from other sources, you can better establish your social media presence through original content. Instead of posting something from some other source – just so you can say you posted on the platform that day – come up with something fresh. Your audience will know the difference.
You’re trying to have a positive impact on your brand, not just distribute repetitive contact.
Make Good Use of Multimedia
When social platforms launch new features, why do social media marketers get excited? Answer: It provides an opportunity to test new ideas with their audience, and it gives them a new medium with which to play.
Here are some samples of using multimedia formats which are distinctive to each channel: LinkedIn documents, Twitter polls, Instagram Stories. You will be able to earn the attention of your audience by adding an interest factor when you publish freshly created multimedia content on your social media.
Spotlight Your Employees
Today’s successful B2B companies are highlighting their employees through social media. This helps personalize your brand and lets the audience put a face to the company. What’s the heart of your business? Answer: people. Not your service, not your product. It’s people.
Here’s a suggestion: Consider posting a photo of the 20 team members involved in making your product rather than simply posting a photo of the product itself. Naturally, each of those 20 people is going to want to share that photo on their social media networks, and it will expand from there.
Make sure you consider the privacy of your employees before posting their faces/names on social media. Clear it with them first and have them sign a release.
Use a Brand Voice That Is Distinguished
Your brand’s voice can be demonstrated every time you post or respond on social media. Not only should your logo be recognizable to customers, your brand voice should be easily recognized, as well. Your company’s perspective and your social content should always be aligned.
Provide Support Provide Support
Few things are more frustrating for your audience than hearing dead silence in response to their request for customer support on social media. Salvage the relationship with your customer by rectifying the problem as soon as possible and responding immediately to their request. This gives future audiences a great impression of how supportive you are to your clientele or even interested parties.
Be Consistent
Maintaining consistency on social media can be a challenge, but it’s important. It takes a lot of planning, content creation, and time to post something every day. If you’re just beginning your social media quest, rather than posting every day, at least for a while, spend your time creating smart content that adds to the feeds of your audience and only post once or twice a week.
Do Some Experimenting with Posting Times and Content
Once you have figured out how to maintain a regular schedule for posting, feel free to play with it a little. Here are some suggestions:
- See if your follower count increases by spending more time on post replies.
- See if impressions are affected by testing out different hashtag amounts.
- To see how your audience reacts to an ad, segment various parts of your audience.
- Check out which performs better – a still image or a video post.
- Post less frequently.
- Post more frequently.
- See if interactions increase when you use more emojis.
- Find out which users are more likely to click by testing out different link positions.
- To see which attracts your audience more, alternate between using statistics and questions in your copy.
Be Conversational
Social media is all about being “social”. It was created specifically with connections in mind – connecting people with other people. Now it connects businesses with other businesses and people with businesses. Remember, however, that if all you’re doing is pushing your service or product in the face of your audience, you won’t be able to connect with them. That’s not socializing. No one wants to interact with a disruptive post that drags them away from what they prefer from their social media experience.
Find out what your audience is interested in and talk about it.
Now that you know a little bit more about how to do B2B marketing on social media, it’s time to put into practice what you’ve read in the above paragraphs.
